My late MIL got these calls several times, and she was sharp enough to either hang up or say “The police are tracing this call right now.” How could the caller know that her only grandson was blind and would never be arrested for speeding/drunk driving/whatever?
I’ve never gotten one because I don’t answer calls from unknown callers. I figure if it’s important, they’ll leave a voice mail. And even if I did get such a call, my grandson is 3 and he doesn’t call me Grandma - that’s his other grandmother!
How about you? If you’ve gotten one (or several) how did you handle it?
They mimic their voice by taking audio from any videos they’ve posted. It’s not terribly hard to find out a lot about a teen that uses the same login across the internet. The scammers can find the person’s social media, youtube, facebook,etc. They find the person’s family (e.g. grandparents) as well as any video/audio the person has uploaded. They feed the audio samples into an AI system and then have it create a real-time chat to text or voice changing system.
I expect this is a part of the scam. I’m sure they count on an elderly person with poor hearing to make it work. Not sure what they do if Grandma says “Which grandson?”
I got it once. Since I have an errant grandson it was a possibility. So, I told him to call his mother and she would decide how I could help. Thirty minutes later I got a call from his ‘attorney’, complete with a case number and other legal sounding BS. “OK”, I said, “Please tell me your clients first name” There was a pause, then “Michael”, “Good try, but wrong answer” Click. They didn’t call back
Not exactly, but I did get an email (not a call) allegedly from a good friend claiming he was stranded in Europe because his wallet was stolen and needed cash to buy a ticket home, and of course would pay me back the instant he returned.
This was hilarious. My friend rarely travels, and I couldn’t see him having any interest in visiting Europe. And if he ever did, it would be with his wife. Did they both get robbed? If not, why not get the money from his wife back home, or from other close relatives? Why me? The whole scam was just so totally unbelievable that it was quite funny.
When I contacted my friend later, comfortably at home, of course, he swore like a drunken sailor at the scammers that had hacked his email.
My mother got one once. She was usually a sucker for scams but thankfully this time she recognized the unlikelihood of the situation. Early in the call she realized it didn’t sound like my son, and she said “Your voice sounds different.” The caller said “Yeah, I have a cold”. So in this case they didn’t bother to try to impersonate the voice, they just had a ready excuse.
I’m not sure. A few years ago I answered a call from someone who was calling from what sounded like a noisy barroom, and I kinda got the impression he was trying to stifle laughter, but I might have been mistaken about that because of all the background noise. Anyway, from the few occasional words that kinda sorta seemed to come through clearly enough to understand, I got the impression I was supposed to believe they had kidnapped someone I knew and were going to do something awful to him if I didn’t pay some money or something. Maybe cut off his fingers, I dunno.
Yeah, buddy, you’re a serious kidnapper, you gotta make more of an effort to convey your message clearly. Otherwise, you’re just a drunk asshole trying to make a prank call.
Not the “Grandma, I’m in Jail” one, but its moral equivalent.
I’m the treasurer of a high school band booster’s club. I know it sounds rinky dink but between the marching band trips and all the winter competition groups I handle some rather large amounts of cash. Our version of, “Grandma, I’m in Jail” is “Pixel, this is Mary the band booster’s president. I need you to pay this vendor right away or we won’t have busses next weekend. ACH/Venmo/whatever the funds to this account…”
I, and all the other band treasurers I talk to, get these almost weekly. I suspect it’s because…
Scammers actually do realize we’re sitting on a lot of cash
All board member names are on a website
Booster club treasurers are volunteers, used to financial transactions with hundreds of people they barely know.
Because of this booster club treasurers are probably pretty easy marks
And finally, in my case, I do have a weakness for toying with them, which lets them know they hit an active account. I’ll go back and forth with them until they realize it’s unlikely a band actually spent their entire budget on barrels of Rocky Mountain Oysters to provision their bus trips.
The first time I got one of these I was fooled for almost as long as it took me to get up out of my chair to deal with it. What I took from that was that if they could fool me for even a few seconds it was possible that they could fool me long enough to send them money. So when our insurance came up for renewal I made sure it would not only cover us if we were scammed but would cover our entire endowment. The insurance company required some changes in our procedures in return but they were all good precautions.
A couple years ago we were visiting Mount Rushmore and while the family was in the giftshop I was outside in the hall where it was more quiet. An older man came out and was on his cell phone and I couldn’t help but eavesdrop on his call. It took me a second listening in to tell he was getting this particular scam call. He looked concerned and worried because they obviously caught him off guard while he was on vacation. I approached him, apologized for listening in, and asked him about some of the details of the call. He was confused at first about how I would know his grandson was in jail then when he realized I was telling him it was a popular scam he went through a run of emotions. Relieved, angry, thankful, angry again.
This was really big in Japan a few years ago (I haven’t heard much about it lately, maybe it’s died down). It was called the “It’s me! It’s me!” scam, because that’s how the caller would identify himself. I think it wasn’t usually legal trouble, but having gotten involved with some shady characters who would seriously hurt him if he didn’t pay up. It got so prevalent that it was on the national news more than once.
We don’t answer calls that we don’t recognize, and I don’t have any offspring of any kind, so I personally am a low-risk person to get or fall for these scam calls.
Not me but my sister got one saying I was in a serious car accident. Which then turned to me being in custody. I was at work at the time which made it funnier. Supposedly they had information about me but due to health issues my sister isn’t the most reliable witness. I don’t know if they had any real information or if they were good at cold reading/leading questions.
I never got one, because I don’t answer unknown numbers and don’t have kids or grandkids anyway, but those kind of calls are pandemic here in Germany. The scammers usually don’t pretend to be your grandkid, but an authority figure like a police officer or a lawyer, and the ruse is to extort money for bailing out your grandson/daughter after they allegedly have been arrested for killing someone in a traffic accident. The kicker is that there’s no bail system at all in Germany, but the scammers are so cunning and apply a lot of psychological pressure on the victims that despite of all warnings, many fall for them.
My parents are 85 and 89, respectively, but still both very bright, but I have been educating and warning them about such scams for decades, and so far they haven’t been tricked. But they still haven’t got that special scam, but only some of the “This is Microsoft customer service” ones, which they figured out as scams.
Summary: people doing those scams are the scum of the earth.
